A House in the Sun

Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War

Daniel A. Barber

An engaging history of solar energy experiments during the Cold War, accompanied by 136 visually stunning illustrations in color

Looks at how architecture has engaged with environmental issues, combining the history of architecture with geopolitical considerations

Illuminates current debates around energy, architecture, and climate

A House in the Sun

Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War

Daniel A. Barber

Description

A House in the Sun describes a number of experiments in solar house heating in American architectural, engineering, political, economic, and corporate contexts from the beginning of World War II until the late 1950s. Houses were built across the Midwest, Northeast, and Southwestern United States, and also proposed for sites in India, South Africa, and Morocco. These experiments developed in parallel to transformations in the discussion of modern architecture, relying on new materials and design ideas for both energy efficiency and claims to cultural relevance. Architects were among the myriad cultural and scientific actors to see the solar house as an important designed element of the American future. These experiments also developed as part of a wider analysis of the globe as an interconnected geophysical system. Perceived resource limitations in the immediate postwar period led to new understandings of the relationship between energy, technology and economy. The solar house - both as a charged object in the milieu of suburban expansion, and as a means to raise the standard of living in developing economies - became an important site for social, technological, and design experimentation. This led to new forms of expertise in architecture and other professions.

Daniel Barber argues that this mid-century interest in solar energy was one of the first episodes in which resource limitations were seen as an opportunity for design to attain new relevance for potential social and cultural transformations. Furthermore, the solar discussion established both an intellectual framework and a funding structure for the articulation of and response to global environmental concerns in subsequent decades. In presenting evidence of resource tensions at the beginning of the Cold War, the book offers a new perspective on the histories of architecture, technology, and environmentalism, one more fully entangled with the often competing dynamics of geopolitical and geophysical pressures.

A House in the Sun

Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War

Daniel A. Barber

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Architecture, Technology, and Politics1. The Modern Solar House2. What is a House?3. Discovering Renewable Resources 4. Experimental Dwellings5. All-Solar Houses6. The World Solar Energy Project7. Design and Research8. Architecture and the SunConclusion: Architecture and EnvironmentalismNotesBibliographyIndex

A House in the Sun

Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War

Daniel A. Barber

Author Information

Daniel A. Barber is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches the history of modern architecture. He has published articles in Grey Room and Technology and Culture.

A House in the Sun

Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War

Daniel A. Barber

Reviews and Awards

"A House in the Sun is a foundational text for a new expanded history of architecture's relationship to environment. In it, both the house and the sun undergo a fascinating series of formal, historical and theoretical phase-shifts, each altering the other's structures of transmission, reflection, absorption and radiation."--Larry Busbea, Journal of Architecture

"Barber eloquently reveals how architecture became subservient to larger global forces of managerial politics and how the language of the modern solar house has functioned as a vessel to endow efforts of harnessing clean energy, as opposed to the dirty extraction of fossil fuels....Overall, Barber's richly illustrated book brings an astonishing number of unexplored histories and resources of the early postwar period to light, unwrapping the convoluted ethics of interdisciplinary experimental collaborations that we now effortlessly address as environmental concerns."--Lydia Kallipoliti, Journal of Architectural Education

"[E]ngaging and wonderfully illustrated work....A House in the Sun provides a nuanced optimism that such bleak conditions can also be the springboard to action and can reconfigure how architecture sees itself, empowering it as a cultural tool that moderates political, social and environmental impacts."--Daniel J. Ryan, Fabrications

"[A] superb account of how a small number of postwar architects struggled with energy and addressed the symbolic and pragmatic challenges of solar houses in the United States....With clarity, breadth, and great detail, Barber articulates the bright prehistory of the transformations of the architect in the solar-house era....A House in the Sun is a robust and generous contribution that will help architects and historians to better conceptualize and situate their practices within the complexity of architecture and energy in the United States."--Kiel Moe, Constructs

"The author provides a thorough, in-depth historical study of the rise and fall of solar houses, the key players (ranging from architects to academics) involved, and the extensive innovation and experimentation generated and relayed through exhibitions, publications, and competitions. Detailed black-and-white and color illustrations are strategically placed to enhance the text. A well-researched prequel to any book on mid-century modern or postwar energy policy...Recommended."--CHOICE

"A House in the Sun carefully articulates the complex, and often tacit, role of architects in the postwar entanglement of technology, politics, economics, and ecology, especially in the United States...With clarity, breadth, and great detail, Barber articulates the bright prehistory of the transformations of the architect in the solar-house era...A House in the Sun is a robust and generous contribution that will help architects and historians to better conceptualize and situate their practices within the complexity of architecture and energy in the United States."--Kiel Moe, Constructs

A House in the Sun

Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War

Daniel A. Barber

From Our Blog

As the world shudders in the face of the Trump Administration rejection of the Paris Climate Accords, other forms of expertise and professional engagement are, again, taking on increased relevance. Buildings have long been important mediators in the relationship between energy, politics, and culture. Today the architecture, engineering and construction professions are increasingly compelled to take on energy efficiency.